Wednesday, August 7, 2024

King Malk's crown

On August 3, I posted "Luther's crown on a conveyor belt," about a dream in which I took a crown off the head of someone called Luther. Thinking about the dream, I connected Luther with Martin Luther King, whose initials spell out "king" in Hebrew, and this made me think of a Bible passage in which David, after defeating the Ammonites, "took their king's crown from off his head" (2 Sam. 12:30). I noted that "their king" was MLKM in Hebrew, and that a minority of translators read it as Milkom (god of the Ammonites) rather than malkam ("their king"). Ben Pratt left a comment connecting the Milkom/Malkam uncertainty wih an old Julian Smith sketch called "Malk," in which one of the characters insists on pronouncing the word milk that way:

Ben left his comment on August 4, but I didn't actually get around to watching the "Malk" until the day before yesterday, August 5. Then on August 6, LXXXVIII finis temporis posted a new video on YouTube, noting, "I've had this one on my laptop for a while but with all the riots going on in the UK due to illegal immigration I think this a good time to release it!"


The video connects the crowning of Charles III with the 2003 movie Johnny English, showing clips in which a Frenchman schemes to become the King of England, saying, "The moment I am crowned king, I will turn England into the largest prison in the history of the world."

This would-be king, whom the video compares to King Charles, is played by John Malkovich.

John Malk-ovich.

After my dream about Luther's crown, I had googled luther crown, and all the results were for an actor called Luther Ford, who plays Prince Harry in a TV series called "The Crown." The LXXXVIII video shows clips of the coronation of Charles, one of which highlights the presence of Prince Harry:

2 comments:

WanderingGondola said...

"Malk" features briefly in a classic Simpsons episode. I went looking for a clip longer than 15 secs for more context, and this one includes a snippet of God Save the King/Queen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tlLPmTe_6Q

Wm Jas Tychonievich said...

Good find! The clip also includes a reference to books being banned by schools. “Now with vitamin R” on the Malk carton, together with the sync context of kings and crowns, made me think of King Vitaman cereal. I googled it and, oddly, one of the first results was an article about King Vitaman cereal AND book-banning in schools.

https://surrealcereal.substack.com/p/king-vitaman-and-the-anti-woke-trend

In the Simpsons clip, one of the banned books is Hop on Pop by Dr.Seuss, presumably chosen as a joke because it’s the least offensive book imaginable. The Simpsons is notoriously prophetic, though, and Dr. Seuss has since been canceled. One of the ringleaders of the Seussophobes is Mo Willems, who recently came up on WW’s blog.

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